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This homemade Gak recipe is sure to entertain the kids for hours!! The gooey slime is completely squishable, and making it is half the fun.
Our family loves playing with this slime so much, we even made a glittery version! You can also turn this into an inexpensive but cute gift.
Entertain the Kids for Hours!
With it being Summer here in AZ, things are getting pretty HOT, and the kids aren’t as excited to play outside, so I thought it would be fun to make Homemade Gak – aka Slime (It’s something I made all the time with my cousin growing up!)
It is so EASY and literally takes 2 minutes to make, but has provided HOURS (and I’m not even joking!), HOURS of entertainment! Every day, for a week now, the kids have played with this gak for at least an hour each day.
I’ve pulled out plastic cookie cutters and they go to town, and guess what?! I LOVE it! It’s hardly any mess! Here is how you can make DIY Slime/Gak as well!
Ingredient Tips:
- Glue: Just use the good old classic white Elmer’s school glue. Nothing special! Off brands will work just well.
- Borax: Sometimes stores don’t always carry Borax. You can order it on Amazon, or Walmart.com! One box will last a really long time.
- Food Coloring: Gel food coloring definitely works WAY better than the regular liquid food coloring! I got Betty Crocker Neon Gel Food Colors and they worked FAB!! The Neon made it look awesome, but I ended up squeezing almost half the tube into the mixture because I wanted it to be really bright.
How to Make Gak:
- PREP. Gather all your supplies together.
- GLUE + WATER. Begin by emptying the two bottles of glue into a bowl. Then, fill bottles with warm water and shake. Empty into your bowl.
- COLOR. Add some food coloring to the bowl of glue and water, then set aside.**
- BORAX. Add 1/2 cup warm water to your plastic cup. Add 1 tsp. borax to the cup of water and mix until borax dissolves. Then, pour this into your glue bowl and start stirring. You will notice how it starts becoming stringy. Keep mixing by using your hands and squishing the mixture around. A few minutes, it will become pretty gelatinous.
- PLAY! Let the kids play with it for a bit and it will become the perfect GOOEY consistency!
Storing Tips
Keep the gak stored in a sealed container or ziploc bag. It should last for at least a couple weeks, but it may start to develop an odor by then.
Activities to Do with Gak
Not only do the kids have fun pulling, kneading, and squishing the gak, you can also use it for activities like:
- Trying to form/sculpt shapes
- Using cookie cutters to cut the gak into shapes and figures
- Cut it with scissors
- Separate it into multiple pieces and practice addition and subtraction
- Create imprints in the gak with plastic bugs, shells, beads, and other objects
A Note of Caution
Although homemade gak is an extremely easy activity for kids to create themselves (my kids who are 10 and older have no problem making this all by themselves), I would be careful with smaller children who may try to eat the gak.
The borax contained in the recipe is a soap used for laundry, and it’s toxic if ingested. So be aware of little ones who may try to eat the slime!
So fun and so easy!! This is seriously the best homemade craft/project I’ve done with the kids in a long time. It doesn’t smell and get all over like other gooey substances and it’s so fun to play with! PLUS, it is super cheap to make!
Gotta love cheap entertainment! 😉
For more fun kids activities, check out:
Homemade Gak
Ingredients
- 2 4 oz Bottles of Elmer's Glue
- 1 tsp Borax (found in the laundry detergent section of the store)
- Water
- Plastic Cup
- Bowl
- Food Coloring
Instructions
- Gather all your supplies together.
- Begin by emptying the two bottles of glue into a bowl. Then, fill bottles with warm water and shake. Empty into your bowl.
- Add some food coloring to the bowl of glue and water, then set aside.**
- Add 1/2 cup warm water to your plastic cup. Add 1 tsp. borax to the cup of water and mix until borax dissolves. Then, pour this into your glue bowl and start stirring. You will notice how it starts becoming stringy. Keep mixing by using your hands and squishing the mixture around. A few minutes, it will become pretty gelatinous.
- Let the kids play with it for a bit and it will become the perfect GOOEY consistency!
Notes
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi! I am a 1st grade teacher and am wanting to make this in my classroom. I have 23 students. How many batches do you think I would need to make? One of these batches be enough for how many kids?
Thanks for the recipe! It was a BIG hit with my 3 year old! 🙂
Love this! We just made it and its a big hit. My first batch I didn’t follow the directions perfectly. (I added too much borax) It was pretty stiff the second time I followed the right amounts of everything and it turned out great! Also I used cake mate neon food coloring and put in the whole bottle it was not bright at all so next time I will use betty crocker food coloring. Kids are happily playing along with my hubby 🙂 Thanks for posting!
I found your idea on pinterest. My 4 year old son and I just finished making it and he was amazed! He said it was magic! Thanks so much for brightening our rainy day in Georgia!
Thanks for the sweet comment, Amanda! So glad your son loved it and thought it was magic. It is definitely one of our favorite activities! Have a great day. 🙂
I tried this twice and it didn’t work! Same result both times — too much water and it wouldn’t congeal. It was like the consistency of cheese curds! Bummer! Any tips? I used Rose Art glue, is that the problem?
I just made this with my 3 little loves! They are having a blast! I am noticing a few little bits get broken off put we have just been squishing it all back together. The boys (9 & 6) found that if you squish it into cups, it makes some interesting noises! My daughter (2) is making snakes!
Such a great fun idea!! Thanks! P.S. what do you store it in?
SO glad they like it!! I like to store mine in a tupperware. I also have found cute containers in the dollar section at Target that are Disney and other character tupperwares that work perfectly. 🙂
I know this is a late comment, but I’ve made 5 batches of the stuff already. I found that Elmer’s school glue works perfectly. Elmer’s multipurpose glue will give it the hard consistency people are complaining about, no matter the borax to glue ratio. I’ve even tried the liquid starch in lieu of borax as well and can’t get it thick enough and is a bit too “gooey” where it sticks too much to hands even when the proportions are changed. Hope this helps. When using Elmer’s Multipurpose glue, I eventually found an acceptable texture (still firm and doesn’t flow well, but malleable) at about half the borax+water quantities as recommended to 8 oz glue.
I pinned this awhile ago and finally got all the ingredients to make this. Just made this with my kiddos. They had a blast making it and now playing with it. Already begging me for more colors. It turned out great for us, not sure why some people are having trouble. I used white rose art glue and regular green food coloring, no staining of any kind for us. It was really messy/watery as first and I wasn’t sure it would firm up, but just as you said, after a few minutes it turned into “the perfect GOOEY consistency!”
omg it is so much fun to make gak!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So glad you guys liked making it! Quick, cheap and fun, right?!
DO NOT use Kool Aid! My first batch turn out to look like runny, scrambled eggs using Kool Aid. But my second batch is fantastic and I followed these directions exactly, just skipped the coloring, The kids (two 7 yr old boys) could care less that it is white and are happily playing now! Thx